


A Familiar Shade of Chartreuse

by lameafpun



Category: Coraline (2009)
Genre: Magic, Revenge, pocket universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lameafpun/pseuds/lameafpun
Summary: The Beldam decides to keep Coraline. This is her last mistake.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	A Familiar Shade of Chartreuse

She can feel when Mother is lying in wait. In the beginning it was just the way the shadows played across the hardwood floor. They danced in the corner of her eye, just a touch too fluid to be natural. Then it was the way the air smelled; stale, like the kind of air in a basement after a storm, the kind of air that sunk through the dirt and got trapped between the stone and concrete. It was the strangely gentle humming that seemed to echo throughout the house the minutes before the game would officially start, the shock of static that crawled up her spine. 

Those had been fairly obvious. Now, Caroline’s senses have gotten more refined. All it takes is a moment.

This time, it’s the way the hair on the nape of her neck stands up. She sinks low into a well practiced crouch, edging around the house with hands on the peeling wallpaper and wide, wide ears. No movement of hers is soundless; every creak of her bones and stretch of her muscles is weighed and measured and considered. Not even the scratching at the scabs around her eye sockets are without their cost. It’s a dry, sandpapery sort of sound — more a scar than a scab but Coraline finds herself pulling off the skin anyway in long bloody strips. Somehow she didn’t consider the trail the warmth dripping down her face would have laid. It was not a mistake she tried to make again.

In this web she is well and truly caught, a vulnerable little wingless fly, and she mustn’t ever forget that.

“Cor-a-line.” The Beldam croons and Coraline drops to the floor as soundlessly as she can. Out of all the games she likes this one the least. “Coooooor-aline.”

A creaking of metal against metal, like a whisk rolling across the floor. Coraline has to fight back a giggle at the imagery that conjures.

It’s the little things.

One game to the next they go, but hide and seek seems to be the Beldam’s favorite.

Coraline stays, hunched in a broom closet, the sides of her legs pressed uncomfortably against some spare buckets. Oh, she had no doubt that the Beldam knew exactly where she was. She suspected most of the fun the Beldam had in these games was knowing that Coraline knew there was no way out and feeling her splinter, however gradually. What was a year to an ageless monster? Five years? A decade?

Coraline has grown out of the heeled boots the Beldam gave her on the night of the acrobatic performance when she asks.

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

The Beldam grins at her. Coraline lifts her chin and straightens her back and refuses to shiver when the Beldam sways in place, hand at her heart as if aghast.

“Oh, Coraline.”

Coraline stares down into the bowl of cereal she can’t remember pouring. It’s as much of an answer she knows she’s going to get but Coraline is tired and she never listened well. She looks up at the once-shiny burnished black buttons and finds them faded.

“Why?”

Cracked plates of porcelain grind noiselessly as the grin twists dangerously. Coraline tracks the dust that rains down. A few slow blinks later, she can see as it collects on the floor and a blink later it’s gone, absorbed back into the flooring.

Cold metal settles on her shoulder as the tines scrape against the soft skin on her neck, a sick facsimile of comfort. They squeeze.

“Why would you ever leave me?”

She should know better. “Why wouldn’t I?” Whoops.

“ _You—_ “

Coraline doesn’t flinch, and watches as a snarl warps the porcelain, listens to the black rage. It washes over her and —

The Beldam crumbles into flakes, like dried paint being scraped away from an old wall. In the back of her mind, Coraline thinks that it looks painful. By the Beldam’s screams, it is.

She reaches out for Coraline. In anger or reaching for some sort of familiarity Coraline doesn’t think she’ll ever know for sure; she steps back and the Beldam’s flailing metal hand knocks over the bowl of cereal.

Her screams stop abruptly as her face finally dissolves. The wind pushes her remnants into the walls. They disappear.

Coraline turns her back on the kitchen and walks down the hallway, slowly, to the living room.

She stares at the little door. It —

The key is in her hand.

Her hands twitch. The door stares back at her: _what are you waiting for_?

She doesn’t know and Coraline would say it’s maddening but she’s crossed that line a while ago.

It’s cool to the touch. Coraline twists, and pulls, and a bubble of a memory pops. She remembers stumbling through a long, dark tunnel criss-crossed with web and children’s toys and leaking blood from her scratched knee. Glass had still been embedded deep in the skin.

The canvas doesn’t sink underneath her weight. She walks. Free. 

**Author's Note:**

> multiple hc here: so in the book it's implied that the beldam used to be human and she happened upon the pocket dimension. so uh i brought magic into it and magic works on a willpower basis? and coraline's pretty willful so she kinda unintentionally wrenched control away from the beldam, which kills her bc she's pretty much been kept alive by the power so rip.


End file.
